Mac

Advantages of MacBook Air:

• .19" less high
• 1.5 fewer pounds (not counting optional super drive)

Advantages of MacBook Pro 13":

• Faster processor
• More RAM
• Larger storage capacity
• Built-in SuperDrive
• More input ports (1 FW and 2 USB vs. 1 USB)
• Twice the battery life
• Out of the box $300 cheaper

Everything else is exactly the same or at least comparable (see below for full comparison). I don't see any real reason to consider the Air.

In fact, I have to say that a middling netbook -- say, an Asus, MSI Wind, or Lenovo -- running Debian would fit my needs just as well nowadays. And at least $1000 cheaper.

MacBook Air

• .76" high
• 12.8" wide
• 8.94" deep
• 3.0 pounds
• 1.86GHz or 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 6MB on-chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed
• 1066MHz frontside bus
• 2GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM onboard
• 120GB 4200-rpm Serial ATA hard disk drive or 128GB solid-state drive
• Optional external USB MacBook Air SuperDrive
• One USB 2.0 port (up to 480 Mbps)
• NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
• Up to 5 hours wireless productivity
• Starts at $1499

MacBook Pro 13"

• .95" high
• 12.78" wide
• 8.94" deep
• 4.5 pounds
• 2.4GHz or 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache
• 1066MHz frontside bus
• 4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 memory; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 8GB
• 250GB or 320GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive; optional 320GB or 500GB 5400-rpm hard drive, or 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB solid-state drive
• 8x slot-loading SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• One FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps), two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps), SD card slot
• NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory
• Up to 10 hours wireless productivity
• Starts at $1199

Note for future reference:

If you are using Mac OS X's text-to-speech capability to, for example, create a command line tea timer, the voice will refer to you as a "c-a-d" rather than a "cad". Very old-fashioned, wanting to spell out the curse word!

Viz:

cad.mp3

What has become a biennial chess obsession of mine has arrived again. This time around, I blame having read Through the Looking-Glass over the weekend. Here are some links to sate the appetite:

Wikipedia

• Chess
• Chess opening
• Chess middlegame
• Chess endgame
• Chess strategy
• Chess tactics

Wikibooks

• Chess
• Chess Opening Theory

Gutenberg

• Game and Playe of the Chesse by William Caxton (1474)
• The Blue Book of Chess by Howard Staunton and Various (1910)
• Chess Strategy by Edward Lasker (1915)
• Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll (1871)

Chess servers

• Free Internet Chess Server (FICS)
• The Internet Chess Club (ICC)

Software

• XBoard and GNU Chess
• Sigma Chess (Mac)
• Chess.app source code (Mac)

Speaking of Chess.app (bundled with Mac OS X in the Applications folder), the newer versions include the ability to play antichess and other variants:

Articles for people looking to transition from TextMate to Vim.

Arthur Debert (Stimuli): "Hello VIM, or quitting TextMate cold turkey"

In my last post I've mentioned my way through VIM. Quiting TextMate cold turnkey wasn't easy. But fear not: there are a bunch of plugins that will make it a breeze.

Jeff Ober (Artful Code): "From TextMate to Vim"

TextMate is an excellent editor, but it is beginning to show its age. It has a few squeaky wheels that have yet to be oiled, and it looks as though the author may be getting bogged down in the minutiae of his next release. With the next version apparently due sometime after the colonization of Mars, it seemed an auspicious time to try out another editor.

Jamis Buck (the buck blogs here): "Coming home to Vim"

Fast forward three years. The vim landscape is different now. There is actually a Mac-friendly GUI version of vim now, MacVim, which actually looks like it belongs on OS X. Vim 7 supports UI tabs, and a much more powerful auto-completion mechanism than before. And plugins like rails.vim and fuzzyfinder.vim mean that TextMate no longer has a corner on powerful project navigation.

On Reddit: "Ask /r/vim: How do you work with a project in vim?"

What I love about TextMate is that I can open a directory and it will list its hierarchy in a drawer, making it very easy to navigate files. Add to that the wonderful Cmd+T which incrementally lets me search for files within this hierarchy and quickly open one in a new tab.

I'm looking for something like this in vim. Or I'm wondering how other people solve the problem of working on a project which requires quickly opening different files and navigating within a hierarchy?

Also useful for those switching from Mac to Linux. ;)

Recently, I pondered the new Verizon Droid and what seemed to be a pretty appealing set of features combined with its being on Verizon's networks and not AT&T's -- "Is this the Droid you're looking for?"

My last line was, "Let’s hope their pricing isn’t stupid." Alas, their shenanigans are dashing that particular wish.

Slashdot: "Verizon Droid Tethering Comes At a Hefty Price"

Tom Bradley reports in PC World that the new Motorola Droid smartphone will cost users $199.99 with a 2-year contract, with an additional $30 per month for the mandatory 'unlimited' data plan that has a monthly cap of 5Gb. Verizon will charge $50 for each additional gigabyte over the 5Gb limit on the unlimited data plan. Verizon has confirmed that tethering will cost another $30 per month for an additional unlimited data plan that is also limited to 5Gb. If you want tethering you will pay $60 above and beyond the monthly contract for service for an 'unlimited' 10Gb of data per month, and if you plan on connecting with an Microsoft Exchange email account you have to pay another $15 a month. 'Verizon seems to be doing everything it can to make the Droid as unappealing as possible by nickel and diming customers so that actually using it is not cost-effective,' writes Bradley.

Emphasis mine. Then there's the doubling of early-termination fees.

Consumer Affairs: "Verizon Wireless To Increase Termination Fees to $350"

A memo leaked from Verizon Wireless confirms that the company is increasing its early contract cancellation fees to as high as $350 for what it calls its "advanced devices."

The memo, obtained by tech blog The Boy Genius Report, states that an "advanced device"'s cancellation fee will drop by $10 for each month completed under contract.

And now, the pièce de résistance, rumors that Apple and Verizon may wind up putting it together by next year after all.

AppleInsider: "Report: Apple to launch Verizon iPhone in Q3 2010"

A new report citing sources in the Taiwan handset supply chain says Apple has contracted to produce a UMTS/CDMA hybrid iPhone due in the third quarter of next year that will enable the company to sell a single global handset to all carriers, and specifically to Verizon Wireless in the US.

Whether that part works out or not, I just can't see messing around with Verizon's non-competitive pricing. See this for more details, but the Droid plans are basically identical to the AT&T/Apple iPhone plans: "Android and iPhone price plan comparison"

Looks like I'll be sticking with my regular cellphone for at least another year, unless things change.

UPDATE 11/11: see also this from Robert Scoble of Scobleizer (warning: page size is huge thanks to a ton of comments),

"The Droid fails AS A PRODUCT when compared to Palm Pre and iPhone"

Why did I buy the Droid when I’m a happy iPhone [user]? Because for the past two days Dave Winer has been praising the Droid and because I want to stay up to date on what’s going on on the Android OS. It’s one thing to try a phone for a couple of minutes, it’s a whole nother thing to force yourself to use it.

For instance, if you see it in the store you might not see that the battery door keeps popping off. If it does that after only a few hours of use it’ll really bug the crap out of you after a year.

And that gives you some insight into why the Motorola Droid fails AS A PRODUCT when compared to the Palm Pre and iPhone.

So I had a PNG image file that I wanted to scale down. As usual, I opened it in Preview.app, went to "Adjust size..." under the Tools menu, and changed the pixel width to like 500 pixels, with the height changing automatically with the aspect ratio.

That's when I noticed the rather astounding "Resulting Size" display below:

Ahem.

After a couple of retries just to make sure, I wound up converting it into a JPG first then resizing. I've never seen that glitch before. :)

I wonder what would have happened if I'd actually resized it! Would my computer have burst into flames, taking down the Internet with it as it pulled in millions of processing hours attempting to compute the resulting image? We'll never know!

UPDATE: Unable to resist my curiosity, I tried to resize it, but it just vibrated once and stayed the same size. Anticlimactic! The GIMP resized it without any issues, so I'm assuming it's a bug in Preview. I will file a bug report with Apple.

Hmm, maybe I won't have to keep on waiting interminably on the iPhone to ditch AT&T exclusivity. The Droid is thoroughly and suddenly intriguing.

Washington Post -- "Verizon Droid Is The Real Deal"

Verizon and Motorola finally lifted the curtain on their new Droid Android phone yesterday. Make no mistake, this is Android's flagship product, and the first phone that will pose a significant threat to Apple's iPhone. And it will be available very soon, possibly as early as the end of this month.

MobileCrunch has been tracking the phone, which has also been called the Tao or Sholes, for some time. Just about anyone who has come in contact with the phone can't stop talking about it. And from what we hear, they have good reason.

I have resisted the iPhone's siren call* despite just about everybody I know getting one, and the only reason is due to AT&T. I am a long-time and very happy Verizon Wireless customer, and I'm not willing to compromise on that.

And, coincidentally, I think I'm due for a new phone on my plan. [Rubs hands together maniacally.]

The Droid is based on Google's open-source Android operating system (itself based on the Linux kernel), has a pull-out keyboard, and is rumored to be running on the same processor as the iPhone.

Let's hope their pricing isn't stupid. :)

* I do have an awesome iPod Touch thanks to a birthday gift from Alex, and I love that thing to death.